Drafts 1–38, Toll

Draft 34: Recto

Draft 34: Recto O pocks of broken asphalt let it go back to weed, the drivewaythat paved the 503 killed at least one tree all of many colors lustrous scraps scrips of seedy beech and clusters of leaf balls of old oak drays pushed out from the tree under a street light—there, so— refracting fragments of squirrel life of squirreled life tumble into the space behind the space? fraction fiction into pronouns? gather where the skittering gathers having pillaged through "it"? having cited ecstasies "of" itness bumbles "of" little objects thinning "of" crickets' pallid run-down whistle in order to mark with a yellow-yillowhi-lite 236 "unpetit bit" it in little, little in it. That wasa question of what I wanted to say— "of"— I am empty this is true there's no point to it. To push thru the deep dream station and still miss the train, to tear up the stairs for the dream el running ever never to catch it the token—hard to tell from moneyhard to tellfrom memory stuck unfound. By the time all this occurred and the one in the booth had used up infuriating infiniating time, the train was as they say in the blues long gone. Stranded by the empty track I wanted to state flat things without intervention without invention—things of such evident Tightness that evidentiary witness with no retainer, 237 —That what? Then what? What would havebeen achieved? What, anyway,was outcome? Meantime "bad memory, nodonut." Butmemorializing isn't the issue. Thereupon comes everythingI did not think once to say, but now shall saytwice: That the beyond is now (or not) in the surface That the whole is strains "of" thinking what the whole and its fractions come to That it is— and I've said only this— a gloss on it a gloss on is glazed applied to ceramics from rain. And That there is a knife in the page sometimes one can find it given its addresses its addressees somewhere between recto and verso 238 in edit verses found penetrating. That memory is blunt dull knife. That memory also is a knife, but blunt and dull a thing one wants incisive, but instead puts flat red streaks though sometimesit surprises and makes a ragged, fractal cut. The whole is the knife that descends and debate ensues about the nature and kind of the threat but on the finger that arrests it changing the outcome there is only one tiny spot one pressure dot. Now saythat the whole emerges from this single interrupt, that it is all here, angelic dot the complete address with it being the point of pointing in the first place 239 the zim of zum, the zine of zaum. Then saythat this dot is really nothing. Really isnothing. All kinds hair all kinds dust all kinds dots— Traces of something both present and absent throwing a little knot of dust and hair suspended towinds in another time by chance, knot and knife knife and knot thickness of breath and care— notwithstanding. So what's more to say? What's to saymore? Open the door. In the maror phase in apples inbinding in honey error too much cinnamon got shook in, shock in splash, more than a dash, so add more wine, more honey more almonds, raisins rozhenkes mil mandln raisins with almonds 240 cut in more apple to point more "brick" (charoset) covenants. Then a secret (garam masala) to taste. Add it. All of it, point blank. And afterwards, after words with the door shut, should I let Elijah's winecup— a whole goblet, so hopeful— just go towaste? Not a chance. You can seeat a glance how I take my place in a lineup ofunbelieving Jews who took the cup and drank. May-November 1998 241 ...